


Senile

by almina



Category: Hacksaw Ridge (2016)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-01-09
Packaged: 2019-03-02 18:44:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13324230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/almina/pseuds/almina
Summary: Even remembering Desmond Doss twists your mind.





	Senile

We play for Vicodin. Free and easy as the hospice is with pain killers, some people need more. I let 'em win mine. In our games, mostly Texas Holdem, the pot consists of vicodin caplets and cash from players who don't gamble with their medications. I win a lot, mostly because I encourage people to think I am just a senile WW2 veteran with a bad bladder. The veteran part is true. The bladder part is true but I am senile at my convenience. 

Occasionally a nursing supervisor looks into my room (private and expensive) and thinks it's nice that the old gomer is keeping what's left of his mind alive and making friends with young people on the staff. Friends, my ancient wrinkled ass! They're prey. Tonight we had some fresh meat. Jamal, a nurse doing his end of life care rotation, had brought Chris, a guy who spent a lot of money on his clothes, a guy whose pupils dilated at the sight of all those controlled substances on the table. I made a point of having to ask his name twice before I tottered off to the bathroom. The game had started by the time I sat down again. Chris had looked at his cards and laid a couple twenties on the pot.

"Kids brought my vending machine money today," I said, calling his $40. Of course my kids and grandkids keep me supplied. They, the ones who take after me anyway, don't want to be left out of my will.

Chris said, "You were in the war, right?" He was trying to make conversation to keep the old guy happy and unsuspicious. "I had an uncle who was in Viet Nam."

"Go a couple wars further back," I said. I didn't push. The guy didn't know his history and I didn't want him pouting and leaving the table, not until I lightened his wallet a little. .

"It was World War II, the Pacific war. I was on Okinawa," I said.

Chris' eyes widened. 

"Did you know Desmond Doss?" The movie had just come out. A few things off in the battle scenes, like how godawful long, it can take to reload, and terror that can reduce grown men to tears. but the gore was dead on, So were the flies. And the rats. Just as well, the movie can't reproduce the smells.

"Yeah, I made his acquaintance." 

I met Doss after B company's first assault on Hacksaw. I opened my robe, and my pajama top to show the scars on my chest. I touched the one by my right collarbone. "Through and through. This one here just missed my spine. and this last one over here, the bullet went downward and just missed my spleen. All this happened on the second run we made at Hacksaw." 

Chris was looking big eyed at the damage. He's a city kid, ghetto tough. He's seen gunshot wounds before. Appreciates the implied danger. He gave a little nod as if he were impressed."

Be impressed with my luck, fool, I thought, not with my scars. Play came round to me and I raised.

"Desmond saved more than seventy five, more like a hundred." I said. "He had said only fifty right after he came down, but I think he was leaving his way open to going back up for more. The army counted a hundred wounded he lowered down the cliff face. After he finally got off Hacksaw they didn't want him going back up to search out someone he missed. Wanna know why? Guys would have followed him, not just the ones trying to atone for mistreating him. Doss had weirdly good luck but the men who followed him wouldn't."

It's tolerated, even expected that guys my age get a little preachy and rambly sometimes.

"The army doesn't know what to do with guys like Doss. Principles and courage can throw a monkey wrench into the gears. He didn't look like much, about 5 foot eight and skinny."

"But he had heart," Chris said. He nodded as if he were in church going with the sermon. 

"'More than that. There was something I was hearing even before we took Hacksaw."

Chris looked up over the rims of his designer glasses.

When Desmond came down after our first attempt he had roped a guy to himself. They came down together. The guy was dead. That's what I heard and believe to this day.. The men of B company sort of gathered around Doss. Everyone wanted to touch him, maybe to atone for being assholes when Desmond arrived in the barracks, maybe so they could tell their grandchildren that they touched Desmond Doss. 

Even Capt. Glover touched him, nearly a caress, he valued Desmond so. Desmond was stumbling on the way to the hospital tent. Could have been sheer exhaustion, or a wound that he hadn't registered yet. The captain called for a stretcher. Someone had anticipated that and a stretcher appeared before the words were out of Glover's mouth. 

Doss looked at it and said, "There's someone who needs it more. He did a 180 and went back to the last guy he'd brought down."

Chris was looking at me wide eyed now. I understand. I do. It's hard to get your head around such selflessness. I laid down a hundred bucks, raising his bet. I don't think he even noticed. I kept talking.

"After any time in the Pacific war, you knew what dead looks like, what it felt like, what it smells like, that pinched shadowed look the face gets. 

I saw that last one Doss brought down. He was dead. But Doss kneels beside him and says "Hey Smitty." ' 

Smitty's eyes sort of fluttered open and he lifts up his hand. Doss takes it like they're going to arm wrestle. 

"You're going home." Doss touched the bloody splotches on Smitty's chest. 

The stretcher bearers had caught up by then. Doss patted Smitty's hand and said, "He needs the stretcher." 

So they put the guy on it. Smitty wouldn't turn loose of Doss' hand.

"I''ll be visiting you in a bit," Doss said. 'But you need to be patched up first." He laid Smitty's hand by his side on the stretcher, and went back to the foot path the men had lined to see him.

"The story beat us down the path. Desmond still stumbled on the way down but there were always hands to catch him. Then at the bottom the hill, this private comes up to me and asks was it true, did Doss bring someone back to life? It wasn't a put on but a real question. I told him, 'Truth is I don't know what I saw.' "

Chris looked at his cards, then at the pot and shrugged like he was too big to worry about losing. So this was Jamal's great card shark friend? His mind was somewhere else. The nursing supervisor looked in just then and I laid my cards face down over the bills and meds in the middle of the table.

Chris and a couple guys from down the hall all took the hint, stood up and said good night to me. It had been a great night. The patients scooped up the painkillers they won. 

"Not so quick,"I said to Chris. "You won a side pot.' 

I lifted up the cards that hid all the medication and money from the nursing supervisor. Chris looked surprised and scooped up his cash winnings. Not as much as I won, but I didn't want the kid going away feeling the night had been a waste. 

"So that's why they wouldn't go back up Hacksaw without him," Chris said.

I thought so too, but Desmond recalling the dead to life was just too unbelievable to put in the movie. .

"Weird things happen in war," I said as Chris stood in the doorway. He glanced up and down the corridor, stepped out and let it close behind him..

I lifted up the poker table to store it in the corner of my room. Jamal helped me.

"Man, you had him going," he said. "Never saw Chris play so sloppy. Doss twisted his mind."

"Doss twisted a lot of minds. Officers knew the same things I told you all. But no way were they going to put that in their reports,. Doss brought a shot to hell dead man back to life?!. Sign your name to stuff like that and you won't pass your next medical."


End file.
